Coping With the Pandemic and the School Lockdowns: The Perspective of Lithuanian School Principals

Lina Kaminskienė, Vidmantas Tūtlys, Genutė Gedvilienė and Ling Yi Chu

Summary:  The article presents the findings of research conducted during the lockdown among school principals in Lithuania. The research aimed to analyse how school principals organised distance education, the challenges they faced, examples of good practice they developed, and how these practices could be used to deal with similar situations in the future. The research sample included 406 school principals in Lithuania. The study was conducted in May 2020 after two months of school lockdowns. The research indicated that during the first two weeks of the lockdown, school principals first focused on organising the training of the teaching staff and technological preparation for distance education, while two months later, their concern shifted to the responsiveness of the students and assessment of the students’ achievements. The study also revealed that school leaders with more work experience cooperated less with national authorities and were mainly supported by their school communities.